The River and I
1910
John G. Neihardt's 1910 masterpiece is a luminous meditation on the Missouri River and the American soul. Written with the reverent intensity of a poet who understood that water can be as alive as any lover or enemy, this semi-autobiographical memoir traces Neihardt's transformation from a terrified child hearing his father's warnings about the river's dangers to a man who sees in its muddy currents the entire sweep of American history. The river becomes his mirror, his teacher, his confidant. Neihardt interweaves personal recollection with the epic tales of explorers and fur traders who navigated these same waters, arguing quietly that the Missouri is not merely a body of water but a living entity that has witnessed the raw emergence of a nation. His prose shifts between moments of childhood terror and profound awe, capturing the particular magic of learning to love something that initially terrified you. This is American nature writing at its most ambitious: a book that understands rivers are the veins of a continent and that our relationships with wild places shape who we become.
Editions
X-Ray
“When I started for the head of navigation a friend asked me what I expected to find on the trip. "Some more of myself," I answered. And, after all, that is the Great Discovery.””
— John G. Neihardt
“A goal, in itself, is an empty thing; all the virtue lies in the moving toward the goal.””
— John G. Neihardt
“I felt the sense of time and self drop away from me. No now, no to-morrow, no yesterday, no I! Only eternity, one vast whole”
— John G. Neihardt
“I think Job and I understand each other better now. It was not the boils, but the free advice!””
— John G. Neihardt
“Many-colored mosses, sickly green, pale, feverish red, yellow like fear, black like despair, purple like the lips of a strangled man, clung there.””
— John G. Neihardt
“Scotland, say, and in Montana?" I did not. "Well," he proceeded, "over in Scotland when a feller sees a sheepman coming down the road with his sheep, he says: 'Behold the gentle shepherd with his fleecy flock!' That's poetry. Now in Montana, that same feller says, when he sees the same feller coming over a ridge with the same sheep: 'Look at that crazy blankety-blank with his woolies!' That's fact. You mind what I say, or you'll get spurred.””
— John G. Neihardt
“Flung down a preliminary mile of steep descent, choked in between soaring walls of rock four hundred yards apart, innumerable crystal tons rushed down ninety feet in one magnificent plunge. You saw the long bent crest”
— John G. Neihardt
“Capricious river draughts, sucking up the damp defile, whipped upward into the blistering sunlight gray spiral towers that leaped into opal fires and dissolved in showers of diamond and pearl and amethyst.””
— John G. Neihardt
“But the Missouri”
— John G. Neihardt
Link to this book
Add a free, dofollow link to Lex on your blog, forum, syllabus, or reading list.
<a href="https://lex-books.com/book/the-river-and-i-29de5424-b41a-4180-af3b-ce4657478897"><img src="https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg" alt="Read The River and I by John G. Neihardt free on Lex" width="160" height="40"></a>[](https://lex-books.com/book/the-river-and-i-29de5424-b41a-4180-af3b-ce4657478897)[url=https://lex-books.com/book/the-river-and-i-29de5424-b41a-4180-af3b-ce4657478897][img]https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg[/img][/url]Read The River and I by John G. Neihardt free on Lex: https://lex-books.com/book/the-river-and-i-29de5424-b41a-4180-af3b-ce4657478897Cite this book
Reading this edition for a paper or guide? Copy a citation.
Neihardt, John G.. The River and I. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-river-and-i-29de5424-b41a-4180-af3b-ce4657478897.Neihardt, J. G. (1910). The River and I. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-river-and-i-29de5424-b41a-4180-af3b-ce4657478897Neihardt, John G.. The River and I. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-river-and-i-29de5424-b41a-4180-af3b-ce4657478897.
